Recorded votes remain optional in Texas Legislature

Despite a rules change that made it easier for lawmakers to document their decisions, the Texas House cast just 10 more recorded votes during the 2005 legislative session than in 2003.

House lawmakers held 960 recorded votes in the session that ended May 30, compared to 950 in the regular session two years ago, according to clerks in the House journal office.

Texas is one of only 10 states that do not require lawmakers to record their individual votes, making it difficult to know where legislators stand.

"We believe their constituents have the right to know how they voted on important issues," said Suzy Woodford, executive director of the government watchdog group Common Cause of Texas.

Open government proponents worry without laws requiring recorded votes, the slight upward trend this year could quickly end.

Opponents of mandatory recorded votes say tracking the thousands of "ayes" and "nays" lawmakers cast during the 140-day session would be time consuming. Plus, they say, rules changes made this session render such laws unnecessary.

Requiring recorded votes on every issue could "bog down the system," said Rep. Sid Miller, R-Stephenville, vice chairman of the House State Affairs Committee.

"I believe everything that has substance should have a recorded vote, but I don't know how you determine that," Miller said.

Texas lawmakers can register their votes in three ways.

They can hold a "voice vote," in which lawmakers yell out or signal "yes" or "no" on a measure, with no record of how each person voted. In a "division vote," there is a brief show of how the majority stands, but no final record of individual votes.

With a recorded vote, each lawmaker's vote is registered _ House members vote electronically and senators do so by voice, note or hand signal.

The 31-member Senate generally takes significantly more recorded votes than the 150-member House, said Patsy Spaw, Senate secretary. In 2005, the upper chamber cast 4,157 recorded votes, compared with 3,449 in 2003, she said.

A possible explanation for the larger number of Senate recorded votes is that senators are required to get a two-thirds vote to bring any bill up for debate.

Before the legislative session began in January, open government activists lobbied for lawmakers to start recording all individual votes.

Legislators received faint praise from open government groups when they changed House and Senate rules to make it easier to request a recorded vote. The change allowed for one member to ask for a recorded vote, instead of the old minimum of three.

"That was a very good first step," said Woodford, but she noted the rule could easily be changed back in future sessions. Lawmakers set new rules at the outset of each session.

At least nine bills to require recorded votes were filed, but all failed. Rep. Elliott Naishtat, D-Austin, proposed a state constitutional amendment to allow Texas voters to decide whether to force lawmakers to cast recorded votes. The Senate approved a similar measure, but both bills failed in the House State Affairs Committee led by Rep. David Swinford, R-Amarillo.

Recent rules changes and administrative updates have increased public access to voting records, making it unnecessary to change the law or the constitution to require recorded votes, Swinford said.

The House also changed its rules regarding voice votes on final passage of a bill. All lawmakers are recorded as a having voted "yes" unless they request that a "no" be entered in the House journal.

The votes and the legislative journals are now more readily available on the Internet, allowing easier access to lawmakers' voting records.

"I have a hard time figuring out why it's such a big deal to put it in the constitution when it's already being done," Swinford said.

The trend toward openness in the Legislature isn't likely to backtrack, Swinford said, especially with the advent of the Internet.

"The person in the deepest dark place in China knows how I vote," Swinford said. "That ought to be enough."